


Green Vesper

by chantefable



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Emotional Infidelity, Engagement, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco Malfoy is taking a stroll in the garden with the sister of his betrothed. This leads to a change of heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Vesper

The Malfoy Gardens are resplendent in full bloom, with apple, cherry, and pear trees standing close enough to create a quivering, never-ending cloud of petals. 

It is perfectly natural to wish for a stroll when such tempting beauty is within reach. Astoria likes to get a bit of fresh air.

Gravel crunches underfoot as they walk, losing themselves in the grassy curves of the garden path.

The midday sun has crowned the trees with golden haloes, light pouring through the branches like smooth honey. The air is fragrant. Draco can feel warmth flooding his cheeks as he keeps briskly walking forward, nearly feverish in his haste. 

Why, he cannot say.

Astoria's fine, fair hair is kept from spilling all over her face by a silk ribbon, red like a fiery tongue of flame.

Draco's fingers itch to touch her pale strands, to twist them and tug at them until his hand is trapped beyond saving. 

And that is wrong, because the hair he is day-dreaming about should be a shade darker, the profile that is etched into his retinas should be sharper and more delicate. Astoria's strides match his own, and Draco keeps glancing sideways, at her bony wrists and prominent knuckles, secretly hoping for their hands to brush against each other. 

They are taking a turn when it finally happens, and the touch conveys a jolt of static electricity that surprises Draco enough that he loses his footing and walks straight onto the trimmed grass, the green carpet spangled with creamy white blossoms.

He stops, and a moment later, Astoria's heels, too, stop clicking on the gravel. A sickly kind of silence settles around them, the air so still that Draco can hear the flutter of leaves on the closest apple tree, Astoria's measured breaths just behind his shoulder and the pounding of his own blood.

Draco's heart lurches, propelled in several directions at once, like a boat being tossed about in a storm. There's the contract between the Malfoys and the Greengrasses. There's the promise Draco has made to his parents. There's Daphne.

Daphne, who is slight and half a head shorter than Draco; her movements are graceful like a nymph's, and her eyes are dark and deep, like a deadly swamp. She stays still when they are together, her face a placid mask behind which Draco can all too clearly imagine indifference and disgust. He is wary of kissing her, afraid she might bruise like a flower. Whenever he does – whenever propriety demands, and Draco cannot avoid it any longer – Daphne's mask shatters for a second, letting Draco glimpse a shadow of something violent and haunted in her sharp cheekbones and doe-like eyes. Afterward, when he offers Daphne his arm, her grip is nearly always too tight, nails sinking slowly but surely in Draco's flesh, painful even through layers of clothing.

Draco cannot help feeling like he is feeding Daphne poison. 

Or perhaps it is the other way around.

Draco is not sure of anything, except that Astoria's cheek smells sweet close to his, ripe and rounded like a peach.

Draco likes to hear Astoria ask him the most trivial things in her hoarse voice, a smile lurking in the corner of her too-wide mouth. He tells her of Mother's roses, the prices of Coulson Cauldrons' shares, the weather in Stockholm, with guilty heat pooling in his stomach as Astoria's gaze rests on his mouth. It's like they're speaking a secret language.

They are of a height, Astoria slightly taller than Draco when she is wearing her heels, and when she leans in and presses a kiss to Draco's forehead – in an already-deserted dining-room, in a dimly lit corridor, in a shadowy nook that gives them a second's worth of privacy – Draco feels deliciously used and desired.

It chills him that they have hardly had a chance to exchange an honest word between them. Just like with Daphne, everything has been shrouded in courtesy and small talk. He should think that he doesn't really know anything about Astoria, except that she licks her lips before she grins, and that her grin is wide, like a slash across her face, and full of teeth. Draco likes that grin; it makes the corners of his own mouth itch and stretch, shaping into a smile when he has long thought that he had forgotten how to smile at all.

Draco should leave. Draco knows he should leave now, should turn around and not look back. He should find Daphne. He has obligations, and she is now one of them. They are going to marry, and kiss with their eyes closed lest they see something frightening in each other's faces, and become one of those couples who always look in the opposite directions in the photographs.

But Astoria is still a warm and solid presence behind his back, her breath ghosting across Draco's bare neck and sending shivers down his spine.

Is she here with him only to spite her sister? Draco does not care one whit.

He turns around to face her, and they are standing so close that her long nose brushes his cheek and he barely needs to reach out to put his arm around her waist. Draco keeps his eyes down, staring at Astoria's sharp collarbones where they peek from below the neckline of her lemon yellow dress.

It should be a deep green dress, rustling and crispy under his fingers as he embraces Daphne. He should be inching closer to inhale her scent and remember what it is.

But there is nowhere else he would rather be.

It's strong, like a punch in the solar plexus, like a migraine splitting one's skull; Draco realises that he _wants_ when he has thought that all he was capable of was agreeing and consenting. Draco feels himself flush and dares to raise his eyes to Astoria's face, luminescent even in the shade.

She licks her lips.

He is drawn to her, and it is foolish to deny it. It is inadvisable, but so is sneaking out to fly your broom at full speed when no one knows where you are, and pulling your sleeves up to your elbows to pluck flowers for a lady when you have a Dark Mark branded into your arm, and telling the truth when someone asks how you are doing, and drinking cocktails before noon. And Draco has been doing all of these things.

These past weeks, he has been doing all of them with Astoria, and the thought sends a heady rush of heat spreading through him, like a shot of vodka.

She catches his lower lip between her teeth even as her cool hands wrap around his neck. As if Draco's neck were the stem of a glass. As if she were about to drink deeply from his lips.

Astoria does not blink, and her gaze does not wander. It remains fixed on Draco's, boring into him, sucking out his soul through the eyes. He cannot look away. He wants to give her everything.

He does.


End file.
